PESD has concluded a two year collaborative study on the Indian natural gas market with three India research groups- A.T. Kearney, Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad, and Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe). The study explores gas demand to the year 2025 in the three main gas consuming sectors within India - electricity generation, nitrogenous fertilizer production, and industrial applications - under a range of different policy and economic scenarios.

The study concludes that coal is likely to remain the dominant fuel in the power sector, but opportunities exist for gas in reducing regional air pollution and providing peaking power. For the fertilizer sector, significant opportunities exist to import cheap fertilizer, thereby reducing domestic gas demand, but political constraints will likely buoy gas demand. Industrial consumers will benefit from increased supplies from LNG to displace expensive liquid fuels, but cheap coal remains the dominant fuel for many industrial applications.

Regional air pollution constraints in the power sector - already underway in certain parts of India could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 100 million tonnes per year. Reforms underway in the Indian coal sector, however, could bring a surge in new supplies, which would undermine the opportunities for gas in the power sector.

From an international supply standpoint, India doesn't appear able to guarantee the offtake of a proposed large natural gas pipeline from Iran within the next 10-15 years, making the project very difficult to justify from a financial risk standpoint.

The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development and the Department of Energy Resources Engineering host this discussion with Thamir Abbas Ghadhban on the state of Iraqi oil. Mr. Ghadhban will present before a discussion with moderators Lou Durlofsky and David Victor, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

After the fall of the Iraqi regime in April 2003, Mr. Ghadhban took initiative to play a leading role in managing the severely damaged Iraqi oil industry. He became CEO of the Ministry of Oil in 2003 and later Minister of Oil in June 2004 through May 2005.

On January 30, 2005, Thamir Ghadhban was elected for membership to the Iraq National Assembly and became a member of the constitutional and economic committees. The next year he continued his service by becoming advisor to the Vice President in March 2006. Currently, he advises the Iraqi Prime Minister on oil and energy.

Author & co-author of more than fifty studies and technical papers dealing with various aspects of Iraqi oil fields in addition to several published papers about Iraq's oil industry, Thamir Ghadhban holds a B.Sc. in Geology from University College and an M.Sc in Petroleum Reservoir Engineering from the Imperial College, London University. He has worked in Iraqi oil since 1973.

This seminar will focus on the Holocaust as the most important factor in shaping the relationship between all Germans and all Jews, as well as on some of the differences in Germany's relationship with Israel on the one hand and with American Jews on the other hand. Consul General Schütte will also address the situation of Jews in Germany today, based on personal observations and research during his posting at the German Embassy in Tel Aviv, as Deputy Head of Division for Middle East Affairs in the German Foreign Office, during a speaking tour in the U.S., and as a visiting scholar at the American Jewish Committee in New York.

About the Speaker
Mr. Rolf Schütte was born on June 9, 1953 in Goslar, Germany. He studied German and Russian Philology and Political Science at Göttingen University, Germany, at Ohio University, and at the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University in Italy. He joined the German Foreign Service in 1981 and served in different functions in the Foreign Office in Bonn and later Berlin (e.g. as Deputy Head of Division for Middle East Affairs and Head of Division for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova) as well as in the German Embassies in Moscow, Tel Aviv and Rome and in the German Mission to the United Nations in New York. Before becoming Consul General in San Francisco he spent a sabbatical year as a Visiting Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, the American Jewish Committee in New York and the Institute of European Studies in Berkeley.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies.